Joe O'Reilly (Fine Gael)

I strongly support Senator Twomey's remarks about nursing homes and about the enactment of legislation. It is an extraordinarily serious matter. We need a well resourced inspectorate and regular inspections. We owe that to our old people. We all know that there are wonderful nursing homes and wonderful people working in them. Great work is being done in most of them but that in no way removes the need for an active and continuous inspectorate. Properly run nursing homes will have nothing to fear from such an inspectorate.

We have heard of many dreadful horrific abuses in children's homes that are painful to recall, but at least the children who were in them lived to tell the tale. Much abuse in nursing homes unfortunately dies with the victim, and at Christmas we should be very mindful of that. We owe it to our older people to do this and I ask the Leader to come back to us on it on specific terms. We need the number of inspectors and the resources of the inspectorate. It must happen instantly. It is a serious matter and Senator Twomey could not be more correct to raise it.

I also support the remarks of Senator Buttimer on residential homes for children. There are 400 children involved, but there is no inspectorate. This is a related issue and I ask the Leader to address it also. We had a horrific catalogue in the Galway home recently, which was beyond description. It is tragic enough that old people are being abandoned in our modern society, where the emphasis is on materialism and wealth, but if we going to abandon old people to homes, the least we can do is ensure a standard of quality care for them. It is a very urgent matter and I want the Leader to be very specific on how we deal with this.